Wounded Clay and New Beginnings
Our family has a board game, Cranium, that comes with putty-like clay. If you draw a particular card in the game, your goal is to sculpt an object out of the clay without speaking, and get your team to guess the correct answer.
If you’re a parent, you know playing family games are all, well, fun and games, until it’s time to put them away. As soon as winner is crowned, children tend to vanish. On the rare occasion someone decides to help put the game away, invariably games pieces disappear into the ether. Or, in the case of Cranium, the lid on clay tub never snaps completely shut. And the next time you get ready to play the game, you discover a glob of granite instead of moldable clay.
If you’ve tried to restore bone dry Play-Doh, you know it’s easier to just buy need clay.
Because you can’t mold dried plaster into anything.
The wild card in our spiritual lives is what we believe God does with uncooperative clay.
Look at the following story from the book of Jeremiah, “So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so, the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.”
In the act of shaping, the potter always aims to shape a whole pot. But sometimes the conditions aren’t cooperating. The temperature, the humidity, the tilt of the wheel, even gravity, can all work against the creator’s vision. This is where the prophet sees the clay get marred, or malformed, in the potter’s hands. Another translation for the Hebrew word describes the clay as “injured.”
Jeremiah doesn’t say the pot was injured by the potter’s hand, only that it was injured in his hands. There are moments of crisis, even trauma, in our lives where we confess:
I’m the pot that’s “marred.” I’m the bowl that’s battered. I’m the vessel that’s injured.
This story is a gentle reminding that no matter what wounds we endure, God never stops Holding,
Carrying,
Sustaining,
Shaping us.
The scene at the potter’s house reminds us God doesn’t do the hurting; that he holds us as we hurt. I don’t understand why God allows injury in my life. And some hurts will never make sense this side of eternity. Even so, I believe God molds and forms the injured clay that is me into a different form out of the same material, shaping it as he, not I, sees fit.
Sometimes all we can see is what’s marred and malformed. We only witness that which is misshapen by tragedy and brokenness. But God beholds clay that’s still soft, still pliable, still able to become a new vessel. Clay only expires when it dries out. As long as the potter kneads and works it, there’s hope.
So, Lord, make me into another pot. Take all of me: the scars, the wounds, the cracks, and flaws and make me into something new. As it seems best to you. Because after all of this, I’m finally ready to have your best version of me than mine.